django CMS 3.2
We are very proud to release django CMS 3.2 with a smarter, fresher and cleaner user interface, including huge steps towards full touch-screen support. We've also made it faster and found other ways to optimise its performance. All in all, we think that version 3.2 is the most exciting release yet of django CMS.
django CMS 3.2 focuses largely on the needs of content editors, providing them with a better experience for creating and managing content. To this end we've worked not just on improvements to django CMS itself but simultaneously improved djangocms-admin-style, djangocms-text-ckeditor and django-filer.
Help yourself to one of the new demosites, and give the new system a quick test-drive.
Take django CMS 3.2 for a spin
User Interface and Touch
We began work on this release with several goals, but first amongst them was: to improve the user experience for content editors using touch-screen devices. A CMS must be able to handle touch devices these days, not just for serving sites but to enable the management of content on the go. While this all sounds great on a marketing flyer, it's very difficult to achieve, especially when you consider limited drag & drop capabilities and screen space limitations.
To get there we've had to rethink some basic concepts in the user interface, including menu actions, button behaviour and display logic. To serve the same end we also undertook a review of the visual design; elements are now bigger and clearer with better contrast ratios. You can see results in the gallery below.
Most editing and management operations now work well on most devices, and we are moving ever closer to complete touch-screen support. Please see the notes on device supportin the documentation for more specific details.
Just "Create"
This release introduces the Content Creation Wizard, an extensible tool for helping content editors quickly add content to their site. To start, content editors hit the new Create button in the toolbar, opening a dialog of choices.
The wizard can be adopted by third-party developers for their own applications, to provide a quick overview of the different types of content that can be added to the site. It's another step towards making the CMS truly the best tool for content creators that it can be.
Speed
Throughout this release, we've paid very close attention to performance. We've rewritten a significant portion of our internal code, especially frontend-related code, optimising speed and load times. We're using techniques such as automatic minification and bundling to wring even better performance from the system. There is a lot more going on behind the scenes. See the documentationfor more details of what we have done, and how we've done it.
Release Notes
Many more improvements and changes have been made since 3.1. Please read the release notes for a more complete list, and detailed instructions on upgrading to 3.2 from previous releases.
django CMS 3.1.4 and 3.0.16
We've also released django CMS 3.1.4 and django CMS 3.0.16alongside this release. Please have a look at their respective release notes for additional information.
Looking forward
In django CMS 3.3 we will focus on developers while 3.4 will focus on content managers, a cycle we plan to maintain. For those who can't wait, here's a sneak peak for features to come – subject to change, of course:
- We'll drop support for Django 1.6 and 1.7, and Python 2.6, to allow for a comprehensive backend code cleanup
- Overhaul the pagetree and menu system
- Decoupling the structure mode from content for over-the-wire performance gains and to open up future editing possibilities to developers
- Starting rework on the permission system
You are welcome to help, either through documentation or pull request, especially on the code cleanup.
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